Blood Runs in the Family
The Order of the Stick: Blood Runs in the Family is the fifth volume of the Order of the Stick, and includes their adventures from #673-946, with the first comic being dated in 31 August 2009. The Order arrives at the Western Continent, uncovering government secrets and the past and recent actions come forth and makes things very complicated for the race to Girard's Gate. For the list of comics in this book and their wikia pages, please click here. Plot Save Room for Desert The group buys what they need and want in Sandsedge, Haley buys desert appropiate clothing, Elan buys a Belt of Charisma, Blackwing buys diamond dust for V, and Roy buys some navigational tools. Haley intends to find a map to Tyrinaria with Elan, but can't due to kingdoms getting conquered, in a loop. When they leave, they fend off a group of slavers, Roy gets a Belt of Giant Strength as a reward and Belkar gets some spice. Later, the spice attracts a giant Purple Worm, which they use to get to their destination. After some days of searching, they find a message from Girard, who reveals that it was a false location, and the message leaves a giant explosion. The Order later gets the plan of checking buildings on the conclusion that Girard's confederates have occasional trips for supplies and such. They leave, while Mr. Scruffy flees from a green scrying eye. Detailed Summary Face the Nation The Monster in the Darkness wants to know if O-Chul is safe, so he asks Tsukiko to find him. She initially refuses, but accepts after the Monster reveals that it is a half a ritual. Then, at a speech, Redcloak reveals that the remains of Azure City is now the nation of Gobbotopia, and that he is leaving with Xykon to search for the Gates. He makes Jirix the new leader. The Azurite Resistance attacks the city prison, releasing 112 prisoners and killing 43 soldiers and 4 browncloaks. Tsukiko arrives and begins reanimating hobgoblins, to the dismay of Redcloak. MitD asks Tsukiko about O-Chul, but she refuses due to him being one of the enemies, and that he's unfindable due to Xykon's Cloister spell. Detailed Summary Farther, Sun, and Slaughter The Order looks around towns to find Girard's associates to no avail. Haley buys some moisturizer with ylang-ylang. They meet up with V, and they are attacked by some bounty hunters, Enor and Gannji. The half of the Order is beaten and captured, yet Haley is able to get a message to Roy. They are brought to the Empire of Blood's palace, where they meet Kilkil, Minister Malack who believes Elan to be Nale, and the Empress of Blood who may or may not want to eat them. They escape, but are stopped by the general, who reveals himself to be Tarquin, Elan and Nale's father. The half of the Order are made as royal guests in the Empire. Tarquin later reveals that he has information about someone with the last name "Draketooth". Roy and Belkar find's Haley's message of Crystal's knife and Nale's bounty poster. They recognize Enor and Gannji as their bounty hunters due to Enor having ylang-ylang on his arm and their tracks Roy and Belkar found. They confront them, which turns into a big bar fight that get's the bounty hunters and Roy and Belkar arrested due to not having paperwork. Durkon goes to re-enter the city for paperwork. Durkon casts 4 Sending spells to Roy, who tells him to find Kilkil to find the others. The Lawyers arrive, with the short lived trial ending with them pleading guilty to be incarcerated in the Bloodstone Correctional Facility until death. Durkon arrives to Malack, and they quickly become friends. Kilkil 'apparently' lost the paperwork (which was actually because of Tarquin) for the bounty hunters, and they are also imprisoned. Durkon excuses himself to 'save' Haley and Elan, who reveal they're guests. V does a Sending spell and tells Roy about the information, Roy tells V to be good guests, get all info, and then jailbreak. Confident that the gladiatorial games are held on the weekend, it's revealed that there are mid-week gladiator games. Detailed Summary Blood Will Out The big part of the Order goes to the dinner, and are introduced to Polozius, Gourntonk, and Amun-Zora. Amun-Zora requests help for her city, so Tarquin dispatches 500 dragoons to join the battle. Haley lies about her information during the dinner due to her being skeptical of Tarquin. Meanwhile, two old men tell Roy how to not get in the fight schedule, saying the best way is to be average. V contacts Hinjo via Sending, who tells V that Redcloak is leaving "soon." While sparring, Roy relays the advice to Belkar, who immediately attacks other prisoners, getting on the schedule. Gannji pushes Roy into Belkar, and Roy defends himself by slamming down Belkar with his wooden sword, getting on the #1 spot on the schedule. Elan goes on a tour with Tarquin, Haley and V release slaves, and Durkon researches Mass Death Ward with Malack. Haley gets her hair back with magical treatments. Later, as Elan and Tarquin go to the top level, Amun-Zora attacks Tarquin, claiming that he sent the Empire of Blood against her city; she is then arrested. At the top level, Tarquin explains his plan, while offhandedly mentioning his kingdom's name was previously Tyrinaria, and the two old men reveal their first names to Roy as Ian and Geoff. Tarquin reveals Elan's welcoming surprise as men being lit on fire in the position of "Elan". Elan is horrified, and duels Tarquin, but ultimately loses. Tarquin spares Elan and tells his ultimate plan for his inevitable ultimate duel with Tarquin: if Elan wins, he'll be a king, but if he loses, he'll be a legend. Elan is horrified and tells Haley everything, and they rush to bring Haley's father. Ian is happy when he first meets Haley again, but he argues with Haley about the Order and specifically Elan and Tarquin. He ultimately stays, but Haley tells Roy to bring him with them when they escape. Detailed Summary Prize Fight Elan, Haley, and V arrive at the arena, as they still are royal guests of Tarquin. Belkar is brought to fight Evisceratus, but Mr. Scruffy kills him by eviscerating him. Enor fights Gannji, and they mostly spend the fight making a plan. Tarquin orders the guards to shoot and kill them. Belkar, feeling pity, releases the allosarus, trampling the duo but body blocking them, and cracking Enor's wing bands, which allows them to fly away and escape. Roy is brought to fight the champ, which he initially refuses to when he learns that he was brought in for public urination. However, he discovers that it is Thog, and begins to fight him. After a long, badass fight, with Thog becoming angry, Roy ultimately wins by using his own body to destroy pillars which causes rubble to fall on Thog. Tarquin is impressed, and offers Roy to come talk it over to maybe become a special operative, in exchange of crime amnesty and record deletion of him, Belkar, Ian, and Geoff. During this, the rest of the Order realize that the Linear Guild is alive and knows they are there, and walk away in a arcade. Haley is turned into stone by Zz'dtri, and he reveals he also has a familiar, Qarr. V orders Elan to bring the shrunked and petrified Haley to Durkon and warn him. Yukyuk, who rides on Sir Scraggly is also there fighting against them. Blackwing figures out that Qarr is still working with the IFCC. V figures out that Zz'dtri configured his spells to specifically fight V, so V dominates Yukyuk to defeat him, but not before V is pushed into another (safe) plane. Zz'dtri is then arrested by the authorities. Blackwing drops Roy's Belt of Giant Strength onto Mr. Scruffy, who blasts Sir Scraggly. Meanwhile, Elan encounters Sabine and Nale alone. Using illusions and surprising intelligence, he manages to get to Durkon. They, however, still get defeated, but Nale brags long enough for Malack to come over. Malack severly injures Nale, but he manages to Dimension Door away and Sabine retreats back to base. With all these encounters done, the Order all meet up again. Ian argues with and insults Tarquin about his country, but before Tarquin can see the prison files on him, Belkar shoves into Kilkil, scattering the files into the air. Geoff and Ian jump off and flee to a abandoned Tyrinaria Border Patrol HQ. Tarquin tells everything he knows about Draketooth and the potential location of the Gate, and Haley figures out Girard's family is guarding the gate, and they suspect Nale knows about it and the location. The party is given a flying carpet and they fly off. However, Tarquin knows that they are affiliated with each other. Tarquin sees the invisible Nale with his Ring of True Seeing, and with some death threats from Malack, Nale tells Tarquin everything he knows. Tarquin and the reluctant Malack join the Linear Guild, along with Kilkil and the released Zz'dtri. Detailed Summary All the Wrong Places A hobgoblin finds Xykon's phylactery, and is escorted by a group to return it, but the Resistance intervenes. They return to find everyone in the headquarters killed by Redcloak and his monster mercenaries. Team Peregrine and Ho Thanh is killed, but Niu, the sole survivor, escapes, given the order of contacting Hinjo. Redcloak destroys the base with an earthquake. Redcloak returns to his private study, to find a dead elder hobgoblin and Tsukiko and her wights searching through it. After some discussion about the other half of the Gate ritual, Redcloak orders her own wights to kill and eat her after she threatens to tell Xykon. The elder hobgoblin is revealed to be a metalsmith who recreated the phylactery. Redcloak puts his best buff spells on it and puts it in a fancy case, and gives it to Xykon. Xykon is surprised about Redcloak killing Tsukiko, but later hesitantly dismisses it. Before going to the Draketooth Pyramid, they make a pit stop to the Astral Plane in order to put his phylactery in a type of fortress there. Detailed Summary Pyramid Scheme At the Windy Canyon, V is brought back by Durkon and Belkar, and Elan gets a great idea but doesn't share it, claiming that it'll only work if kept secret. Navigating the canyon, the Order's spellcasters fails to find any shortcuts. They find a illusory wall and they find the invisible Draketooth Pyramid behind it. They dispel the illusion and Yukyuk triggers some of the traps on the staircase and Haley disarms the rest. In the cafeteria, they find the entire Draketooth Family dead, they search around and V finds a mural which reveals that the family was descendants from black dragons, the bloodline V ended. V flees deeper into the pyramid out of shock, and triggers a trapdoor-piston trap, hiding and knocking them out. The rest of the Order finds confirmation that Kraagor's Gate is still intact from a monitoring device and Girard's body in a sarcophagus. Roy goes outside to see the Linear Guild firing a acid orb at them. It fills the entire room and another one hits, which kills Yukyuk. Tarquin disguises and imitates Thog, and solos the Order. The Order retreats into the pyramid. Malack reanimates the corpses of the Draketooth Family. Roy makes a plan to ambush the Guild in a long hallway. V and Blackwing wakes up, and V almost puts their guilt aside, but a mummy falls in, and she retreats with Passwall. The Order puts their plan in action, ultimately causing the Guild to retreat, and with Sabine being banished back to her plane. Malack also gets separated from the group and is left descending into the pyramid alone. Meanwhile, V attempts to rationalize, but Blackwing gets them even more frustrated. Detailed Summary Life After Death The Order encounters a giant door, covered by magical runes. Haley attempts to disarm it, but accidentally summons a giant hell-hound when disarming a rune. Belkar is forced to ride the hellhound as his knife is stuck in it, and it runs away. Belkar is separated from the Order, and encounters Malack, who easily holds Belkar. Malack decides to vampirize Belkar, but is stopped in time by Durkon, who casts Mass Death Ward on Belkar. Durkon refuses the offers Malack gives him, and they fight. Durkon seems to have the upper hand at first, but it quickly ends as Durkon is ensnared by Malack, and he dismisses Durkon's Mass Death Ward personal spell. Malack kills Durkon, with his last wishes saying to leave the Order alive. Malack speeds up Durkon's vampirization with a spell, but leaves Belkar alive, releasing his hold on him. Belkar crawls back to the Order, who reveals that Durkon was killed. Sort of. Angry at Belkar's apparent lies, Roy gets extremely angry at Belkar, and even considers killing him, but soon realizes that Durkon indeed was now a enemy vampire. Roy loses his hope, but is forced to go on as Belkar tells him that Durkon's death was for nothing. Vaarsuvius recovers when Qarr attempts to taunt them, and goes down further in the tunnels when they realize Qarr isn't stopping them from going back up. Meanwhile, the Order encounters what appears to be Xykon and Redcloak. The Order wins, but it's revealed to be a illusion. During a wedding, Elan realizes this and breaks himself and others out of the illusion, and also releases Belkar. Roy gets spirit back, realizing that he got to say goodbye to Durkon of some sort in the illusion. Detailed Summary Obligatory Climatic Battle The Order finds a large room with a smaller room in the middle, and then they hide from the Guild behind a illusory wall. The Guild finds a apparent message saying that the Gate was somewhere else inside the small room, and Malack doesn't rat out the Order, respecting Durkon's last wishes. The Order figures out that the large pillar message was in fact the hidden Gate, and Roy prepares to destroy it to stop from villains getting their hands on it. Vaarsuvius finds out Roy's plan in the service tunnels, and figures out that there are too many unknown variables Roy knows, and attempts to communicate with Roy by using a spell to create noise. However, V's plan is stopped by the IFCC, who uses their time to possess V's body by basically just putting V's soul in Hell for a time. Roy destroys the gate, and the Order takes cover in Girard's sarcophagus before the explosion. The real Team Evil arrives and they prepare to finish off the Order. However, they are stopped by the Monster in the Darkness, who has changed by O-Chul's influences, saying that the real enemy was O-Chul, and that the Order was just a distraction. Team Evil leaves, not before Redcloak summons a giant Silicon Elemental to crush the Order, starting with Roy first. As Durkon, Nale, Zz'dtri, and Malack look on the Order fighting the Elemental, Nale kills Malack. With Malack dead, Durkon kills Zz'dtri. The reunited Order kills the Silicon Elemental. Tarquin comes in with a large army, Nale following him. While conversing with Elan, Tarquin learns of Malack death as Nale taunts him with it, so Tarquin confronts Nale. Nale tells Tarquin that he doesn't want his help, so Tarquin kills Nale. Tarquin frames Ian Starshine for Gourntonk's murder by Jacinda, and he orders his army to kill the Order (except for Elan and Haley) after coming to the conclusion that Roy is preventing Elan from his heroic potential. Vaarsuvius is released from Hell and back into their own body, and proceeds to help the Order. The Order escapes on Bloodfeast the Extreme-inator. Tarquin convinces Laurin and Miron to help end the Order, and they give chase on another dinosaur. After a series of events, Miron is forced to teleport out. and the Order seems done for, if it were not for the timely intervention of Julio Scoundrél, whom Elan asked for help earlier on the book. The Order gets on the Mechane, and have one last confrontation with Tarquin and Laurin. Laurin ditches out, and Tarquin is hanging off a handrail, with Elan having the choice to help him up, or leave him to fall. Elan, ultimately, chooses the latter after saying that Tarquin wasn't the real villain. Detailed Summary The Order finds the end of the hallway, and plan to enter another small building inside it when Belkar detects the Linear Guild from another hallway. They go into a corner, and Elan makes a illusory wall in front of them. It's revealed that the Guild had to go through another similar hallway with similar traps, but also managed to break through them.Comic 892, "Walled In" The Order witnesses the Guild go into the building while Haley gets a Sending from an Azurite Cleric, warning them about the incoming arrival of Xykon.Comic 893, "Closing In" The Guild enters the building, only find to see a supposedly dead end and false lead with a message on a pillar, as all spell casters use their spells to scan it to no avail. Nale angrily orders them to get back outside.Comic 892, "The Last Room" Haley tells the Order about the message, in which it is revealed that the Azurites were trying to reach them for 3 hours. As the Guild is running back out, Malack, with his True Seeing spell still active, sees the Order in the corner. He, however, respects Durkon's wish of leaving his friends behind and decides to not rat them out. With the Guild gone, the Order inspects the dead end. Haley and Roy realizes that it's a double bluff, and crack the pillar, as its shown to have lead sheeting to block divination on it. Roy tells his plan to destroy the Gate.Comic 895, "Plain Sight" As the Order discusses on the plan, V walks through the tunnels and hears their plans. However, Vaarsuvius realizes that there are too much unknown variables of the consequences of destroying the Gate, as the planet Blackwing saw in the rift could mean destructive results, and if anything they've been told is actually accurate. As Roy prepares to destroy the Gate, Vaarsuvius gains their attention by using a Bugsby's Hand spell to make a knocking door on the wall and yelling very loudly. But before the Order could check it out, the IFCC intervenes. Into the Sunset The Order recovers, and Haley convinces Roy that she can meet up with her father, and Roy promises to Elan to figure out what to do on Tarquin's empires after saving the world. Belkar starts to become suspicious of vampire Durkon, believing that he's a enemy in disguise. Meeting up with her father, Ian refuses to come with Haley, believing that he's gonna do some good this time. The bounty hunters arrive, but to recruit Ian for a rebellion leaded by Amun-Zora. Ian and Haley say goodbye, and Elan gives Tarquin his plan on defeating his father. Geoff is revealed to be working under Bozzok, and Ian discovers this, holding him up to knife point. Geoff claims that he was doing it for Jiminy, who was death threatened when he attempted to leave the Thieves Guild. Julio leaves the Mechane to the Order and under command of Bandana Secundus as he is going on vacation. He also gives Elan his Chaos Sabre. Vaarsuvius reveals to Roy everything they know about the IFCC and the Snarl. Meanwhile, Laurin and Miron investigate the Snarl rift, Laurin sees the Snarl right before it attacks. Later, Roy gives some sort of inspirational speech, and it is revealed that Durkon is not actually Durkon, and instead a servant under Hel acting as Durkon. Detailed Summary Locations * Sandsedge * Great Barren Desert * Draketooth Pyramid ** Illusory Wedding ** Snarl Crater * Windy Canyon * OASIS Water Station (bonus comic only) * Empire of Blood ** Bleedingham *** Palace of Blood **** Unfinished Area of the Palace *** Bloodstone Correctional Facility ** Inn/Tavern ** Sisterhood of Aton ** SUNRISE BLOODY SUNRISE - Bed & Breakfest * Gobbotopia ** Gobbotopia Tower ** "Our City Prison" ** Azurite Resistance HQ * Abandoned Tyrinaria Border Patrol HQ * Mechane Cast References Category:OOTS Books